Monday, July 10, 2006

Well here’s another topic that I did not originate, but I did come to the realization on my own. Blogging is the new CB radio of the modern age.

I used to be a 1970’s CB’er with two call signs, one publicly known and the other I used for cruising and carousing!

I was the “Silent Runner” talking with friends when leaving or arriving at work and along the highways and byways. I got the CB handle from a 1958 movie called Run Silent Run Deep staring Burt Lancaster and Clark Gable. “Rig for silent running” was a command the captain gave when the sub was being dogged by a destroyer. The sub would sit quietly on the bottom or float along with no engines, electrical, or mechanical sounds and listen to the sonar pings. That’s the way I usually ran the Interstates, silent and listening – amused by the trucker's banter and conversations lonely women started up with them.

Of course, later there was also “Silent Running” with Bruce Dern. That movie always leaves me in tears – I hate to see anything lonely and the robot left watering the forest with its little watering bucket in deep space was the ultimate in loneliness. Sniff – I’m a softy I suppose, so I guess Silent Runner was a blend of these significances for me.

I was the “Black Max” on weekends while cruising around my home base area after my divorce. Being the typical low-life scum of a man, I didn’t want to meet women before seeing what that looked like, so I would set up a situation where I could peruse the quarry without being seen and then if they looked promising I would then pull up and say “Howdy, I’m the Black Max.” Kind’a sounds like a chat-room stalk – huh? Just tends to add credence to my point about blogging evolving from CBs.

I did a lot of successful cruising, but it cost me a maxed out Exxon credit card even with gas being only 63 cents then. I finally sold the ’78 Trans Am for, of all things, a Toyota Celica GT! My hotrod days ended for quite a while, but I made a come back later (That’s another story and covered quite well in “Where They’ve Gone” – as a matter of fact, you can see the Black Max there with the Big Mamma CB antenna sticking up in back!).

I also had a base station (the 1970s blog access device) with an Astatic D104 "Golden Eagle", a.k.a. the chicken-choker or lollypop, microphone! I loved to choke this baby and broadcast out on the airways and even “shot skip” a few times across America when conditions were right.

Basically I just bellowed out “Breaker! Breaker! Uh, how ‘bout’ it there Doe Eyes, got’ca ears on? Come on.” Thus would begin a night of hollering at friends around the county – friends I never met in person, but with who I talked about life and general happenings until the wee hours.

CBing kind of faded out quickly for me, but now I blog and talk to new friends who I have never met in person, but we discuss life and general happenings until the wee hours just the same.

Check that. Drivin' home from the gun show in Ft. Worth tonight I stopped at a truck stop for a drink, and they still have them. Were advertisin' one, top of the line, for $59 and change. I guess you can still use those old handles.

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